Blogger, realist, clarifier, if there is such a term. Truth teller, who's not afraid to admit I'm wrong. Hellacious, renegade violist and "computer whisperer"; was once accused of practicing the Dark Arts with systems.
I'm tougher than most and survived things that would have killed most women. I still love life. I was homeless, now I'm not. Still in the 'hood, though. Nebraska Avenue, 33605. The stories are priceless and endless.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

PLAYING THE VIOLIN AND HOW TO AVOID IT – REDUX

What a riveting start to a post. A list of the post you are about to read and the places you can currently read it. All are legitimate, with the exception of "Otto Benjamin Violins, blah blah." Unless you are fluent in Cowface and Dingbat the site is unreadable, but this is how my friends, Andi Roo and Aaron Brinker brought to my attention the fact that my deathless prose had been gasp! stolen.

(IT SHOULD BE NOTED, IN THE INTEREST OF OPEN AND FAIR DISCLOSURE, THAT THE READER WILL NEVER FIND OUT HOW TO AVOID PLAYING THE VIOLIN BY READING THIS POST)

I
first unleashed this little gem on an unsuspecting world back in
early August of 2012, and it went on to become one of my most
“popular” pieces, right up there with my “nameless guy who fell
down in the Falcons' Superdome and was horrified” and “E. T.
Phone Home” posts. This piece also has the erm, distinction along
with a couple of other nameless pieces of being stolen and sold on a
now-defunct “for-content” website. How ironical, I jestically
say, as I've never earned dime one for my blatherings. There's a
reason for this. I get PAID (or I used to) to play music and not for
writing verbiage. Maybe I should be paid to not write
verbiage; I haven't a clue as to whether I'm any good or not as a
writer, I just know that from the age of fifteen, I wrote, and
understood English at a post-doctoral level.

Einstein
wrote his “General Theory of Relativity” and I read an English
translation of it. I cannot say whether it was riveting or boring; it
got the point across, but it lacked something of the elegance of his
little E = MC2 equationby pages and pages and
so on and so forth. I think my writing is a lot like that. It's kind
of hilarious to me that someone “stole” my piece and sold it,
when I wouldn't have the balls to try and peddle my own jun -, er,
work, yet, in solidarity to my writerly friends, and I owe them much
and they depend on their writing for a living, I went the whole route
of writing the “publisher” and kindly requesting they remove my
piece. I kept it light and airy and the piece was removed within 24
hours. The website disappeared shortly thereafter.

I'll bet he was fun in a string quartet!

I
owe what little writing talent I possess to my parents who were very
well-read, and downright scholarly in their own ways. My mother held
two degrees, and my father, never having graduated from high school,
lied his way into the Air Force, went to the Flight Academy and flew
B-29s for roughly three years in the Korean action, until he mustered
out on a medical discharge, after two crash-landings. That's two whole more flights than I ever want to have endured, WITHOUT the crashing. He continued to fly, privately, as did my mother; I think they were both a pair of loons. I loathe flying.

He was the epitome of cool; he brought me home from the hospital and was my primary caregiver until I started kindergarten. He and my mom were great together, until they weren't, due to her own mental illness, but she was a star, too. My folks had the hearts of lions.

He then attended college; went year-round
and graduated 3rd in his class. Maybe there were only four
students, but he was pretty bright. He did all this while caring for
me, as my mom was working three jobs. To keep me quiet, he played a
combination of Glenn Miller, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky,
Tommy Dorsey and Debussy on the Hi-Fi, but not all at once, so he could do his homework. I was a
preemie and tended to be fussy. Music was the perfect panacea and the
only thing I ever loved deeply and passionately. I love working with
computers, but that is more about problem-solving and it kind of
sucks as performance art; no one is going to pay for an evening of
watching me code, or resolve a system issue caused by the r.schmitt
trojan virus. Boring stuff.

My Ma was no slouch in the brains department, either. While working on her second degree, a B.S. in Psychology, she was programming in Fortran, a machine language hardly anyone uses. I found her books, after her death. Since she was taking no classes, she was either plotting a takeover of the world, or writing games for her own enjoyment. I would bet the former.

I
went to college on scholarship, and was a lazy student, due to
having perfect pitch. But, I have since learned that without music in my
life, my life had lost it's anchor. To make this short
and sweet, I was diagnosed with essential tremor, after having
exhibited symptoms for years and harboring latent symptoms for decades. I finally had to stop playing altogether. This is a condition much like
Parkinson's Disease, without the heavy medications; call it
“Parkinson's Lite” if you like, but it can be every bit as horrible as Parkinson's, with core tremors and psychosis. I have all the inherent symptoms; tremors,
drooling, no sense of smell, I stagger, occasionally and stutter when
excited. It also has deep psychological components and at times those
were ruinous. But, I found an awesome, awesome neurologist, who found
a good medication that mitigates the core tremor and has allowed me
to resume my mostly abnormal, life.

Me, the sole offspring of the two pilots above, on the left, with a touring buddy and my partner in crime, "Wolf", a superb viola made only ten years after the death of Beethoven in 1827. I'm happy, because I'm NOT playing the violin!

In
fact, I have started playing AGAIN, and have auditioned and am
playing in the Tampa Bay Symphony, a group I started with 20 years
ago, when I first moved to Tampa. So, I'm currently practicing up a
storm, and participating in some clinical trials that I hope helps people
farther on down the road. The Parkinson's Foundation has been very,
very good to me and I am fortunate indeed to have found them. But
that is not what this post is about. It's about playing the violin.
Now, that I'm back in the harness, I have to say once again, it is to
be avoided; at all costs.

Ring
ring!

Me:
"Hello!"

Manager:
"Hey, Mary. Are you doing anything the week of November 20th to
the 25th?"

Me:
"Well, let me check my calendar." Sound of pages flapping
in the breeze. "Hmm, nothing but the “Merry Parade of Turkeys”
and “Turkeys, We Got Your Turkeys Right Here with Skitch Henderson
Sound Alikes." At this time, I am living in Charlotte, North
Carolina. I am also still playing in Tampa and pretty much driving
all over the south. I am also exclusively playing the viola.

Manager:
"So, you have open time?"

Me:
"Yes." To my everlasting regret, I said, "Yes."

Manager:
"Great! I need a violinist for..."

I
didn't hear the rest. I was in shock. I told people for years that I
didn't play the violin. I never played the violin. I hadn't played
the violin since I was sixteen, and here I was at 45. I play AT the
violin. I still don't play the violin. I hate the screechy little suckers. They're all under your chin being little and screamy. What
the hell is that? I just hate it. The only reason I started to "play"
the sons of bitches is because I got sucker punched and caught
unawares. I didn't even own a violin for years. I refused to buy one.
I rented one for years and a student model at that. I figured since I didn't play the bastard, I wasn't going to be pretentious about it
and get some big, souped-up Lamborghini violin or something. I have a
Lamborghini viola. I rented a violin with steel tuners, tin strings,
and tape on the finger board which I never, ever, ever allowed any of
my students to use. That pussy Suziki shit with tape is beyond
horrible. If you can't use hand-framing and play by ear, like the God
Galamian intended, burn that hunk of wood. You don't deserve to call
yourself a non-fretted string player.

Aargh! No, it's not "Talk Like a Pirate Day!" Those tapes! When you shift positions, the intervals change! It's impossible to develop your "ear" assuming you have one to begin with, if you're using tape as a "guideline" Fluidity counts. Not everyone is meant to play non-fretted instruments; those folks need to stick to "Guitar Hero!"

So,
I'd rent these god-awful violins with tin strings and "play"
in these violin sections, in the hopes that people would get the hint
and quit hiring me to "play" the goddamned violin. I'd play
loud. Real loud and shrieky, when the music asked for piano.
I'd ask my managers shit like, "why the hell are you hiring me
to play the violin? Did every other violinist in Tampa die/migrate/go
on vacation?" They still hired me. I tried drinking my way
through rehearsals and that didn't work, because everyone else was
out smoking blunts during the breaks; they couldn't tell stoned from drunk.

People thought I was a good violin player; I guess because I didn't give a damn and was reckless; I was the Nic Cage of violinists raging around on my rented violins. I
started ending up in first violin sections, so it got exponentially suckier. You know what really,
really sucks? Playing Mozart on
the violin. I hate Mozart. I hate Mozart, MORE than I hate
the violin, if such a thing were possible. Because Mozart's a pussy.
He gets right up to an idea and says “never mind” and plays
mezzo-forte, before limping off into the 600th pianissimo
iteration of the same shit he wrote over and over and over and over.
Yes sir, there is Hell in a barrel right there. Eighteen ledger lines
above the staff and I'm playing "guess the note." I can't
even read that shit. It's in soprano clef. I normally read the viola
clef. Okay, I read soprano clef just fine, but when you're up towards
the direction of the sun, weirdness starts to happen, physically.
Purple becomes yellow. CRYSTAL-BLUE PERSUASION! Mountains walk. Cats
do algebra. The horn section is being played by The California
Raisins. I look down, unsurprised to find that the stage has turned
to lava, when I hit some of those harmonics. My stand partner's hair
catches fire. God knows my ears are still ringing.

I
was laughing about it though, when I thought about all the variations and different types of gigs and positions I've held. I played with
Styx and I can't remember how this came up, but it is also the same
with a Johnny Mathis tune; one of his “Brazilian” set. "Sail
Away" which is so lovely, is an absolute bitch to play. It
consists of 64th notes, practically in its entirety. Denis Deyoung's
father was part of the OSS in WWII and was one of the first to reach
Paris, with the Allies. You can hear the Chopin and Debussy in Styx's
music. An interesting little bit of trivia along with the silly
today. There, aren't you edified?

Styx's
music is challenging and we had a lot of fun playing it. But, one of
the things that does happen with playing that type of music, is you
lose the edge on your heftier musical "chops" as we
call them. We were touring pretty extensively at the time with Styx
and "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto" -ing all over the place and
having a hell of a lot of fun. In the midst of this tour, we had a
layover and and my trio, myself, a violinist and cellist, picked up this "fun" gig and none of us
were exactly slouches. Being the, uh, "professionals" that
we were supposed to be, we show up for this luncheon or whatever the
hell it was to provide "background" music and proceed to
play trios, for a couple of hours. I just grabbed a bunch of my trio
music and off we went.

Beethoven is my muse; he's always been in my life. I auditioned on his 5th Symphony and won it. I am a rock-and-roll violist!

Now,
it is axiomatic that the fewer instruments you have, the more
difficult the music is going to be, especially if you are going to
play, oh say, Beethoven. If we were going to play, Johnny Mercer, we
might have stood a chance, or maybe, some Beatles transcriptions, but Beethoven? It was...
interesting. I have played all of his String Quartets. They rock. His
Trio in C Minor rocks. It also requires lots and lots and lots of
practice. Playing Styx's "Mr. Roboto" for 18 weeks straight
does not constitute practicing Beethoven's trio. We all learned a
valuable lesson that day; leave the Beethoven at home, if you haven't
looked at it in the last, say, week or so. Thank god the Luncheon
guests were drunk.

Itinerant violist and computer trouble-shooter for more years than I care to admit. While no longer homeless, still crazy, but with Labels *sigh* a bus-riding Asperger, bipolar-ridden, PD or non-PD, carbon life-form, providing fodder for Medical community. Not even kidding. Still ridiculous.

Acquiring a much richer and fuller experience and finding deeper meaning in day to day life, than I ever learned in a classroom, concert hall, or computer center. I will never believe that things just occur randomly, just monumentally disordered.

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Eventually everything happens on Nebraska Avenue. The pimps have been here, both the real and the political. The athletes and the artists. It's a life, a state of mind and it's home, Nebraska Avenue, 33605, 33602 and 33604.

THE DELIBERATE GOALS OF VIOLA FURY

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I Haz Home Naow - in Kitty Heaven

My Rent-a-Kitty, has become a Perma-Kitty, Mama, although she passed away, nearly one year to the day that Jim died. She actually adopted Jim first, then me.